Eighty-Five from the Archive: Irwin Shaw

This year is The New Yorker’s eighty-fifth anniversary. To celebrate, over eighty-five weekdays we will turn a spotlight on a notable article, story, or poem from the magazine’s history. The issue containing that day’s selected piece will be made freely available in our digital archive and will remain open until the next day’s selection is posted.

In its second decade, under the guidance of Katharine S. White, The New Yorker began to seek out and publish more ambitious literary fiction than the humorous sketches and satirical “casuals” it had printed during the twenties. Short stories of greater length began to run in slots that had previously been set aside for reported pieces and Profiles. Along with his contemporaries Sally Benson, Daniel Fuchs, John O’Hara, and John Cheever, Irwin Shaw was a key figure in this transformation. Shaw, who published more than forty stories in the magazine between 1937 and 1955, started his career writing for the “Dick Tracy” radio serial and worked in theatre before turning to fiction. He went on to write a dozen novels, including the best sellers “The Young Lions” and “The Troubled Air.”

The influence of his early years in the theatre is evident in today’s highlighted piece, “The Girls in their Summer Dresses,” from the issue of February 4, 1939. The story, made up almost entirely of dialogue, chronicles a few hours in the unhappy marriage of a middle-aged New York couple, Michael and Frances. In the course of their day, they retreat to a bar where, prompted by Frances, Michael explains why he likes to look at women on the street.

“I’m older now, I’m a man getting near middle age, putting on a little fat, and I still love to walk along Fifth Avenue at three o’ clock on the east side of the street between Fiftieth and Fifty-seventh Streets. They’e all out then, shopping, in their furs and their crazy hats, everything all concentrated from all over the world into seven blocks—the best furs, the best clothes, the handsomest women, out to spend money and feeling good about it…

“I like the girls in the offices. Neat with their eyeglasses, smart, chipper, knowing what everything is about. I like the girls on Forty-fourth Street at lunchtime, the actresses, all dressed up on nothing a week. I like the salesgirls in the stores, paying attention to you first because you’re a man, leaving lady customers waiting…

“When I think of New York City, I think of all the girls on parade in the city. I don’t know whether it’s something special with me or whether every man in the city walks around with the same feeling inside him, but I feel as though I’m at a picnic in this city. I like to sit near women in the theatres, the famous beauties who’ve taken six hours to get ready and look it. And the young girls at the football games, with the red cheeks, and when the warm weather comes, the girls in their summer dresses.” He finished his drink. “That’s the story.”